But Girls Gone Rogue goes deeper. It's got even more random tables, locations, NPCs, humor, sleaze, and adventuring possibilities... and the artwork is a bit filthier. You're welcome. Even if you prefer another sci-fi RPG, these books can give your campaign that edge, that... je ne sais quoi you've been looking for; taking it from PG to NC-17.

Check out the KS updates containing dropbox links to FREE (for personal, non-commercial use) maps. You don't have to participate or back anything. A cantina/bar/club and three starships are yours for the taking! Glynn Seal of +MonkeyBlood Design did such an amazing job.

I was talking to a player in last week's Alpha Blue game and he was both impressed with the maps and the game, calling it a "breath of fresh air". If you've been stuck in a fantasy rut (like many of us at one point or another), the space station brothel could be your home away from home.

If you know a gamer who might be interested in such things, tell them about the KS. They can get both Alpha Blue and Girls Gone Rogue for a good price. Also, there are still two top-tier backer reward packages. I received the t-shirts today and they look sexy and badass!

Saturday, February 20, 2016

There was a time when sexuality and science fiction went hand in hand. A time when sci-fi masters like Robert A. Heinlein wrote about a future where nudity was in and chastity was out. Over the years, the genre has been neutered. Gone are the three-nippled alien hookers and in their place is a lot of techno-babble. ~ Giant Freakin Robot

Standing proudly with hands on hips, Shumachs Plib surveyed his new captain's chair upon his new starship while gazing upon the stars beyond, his validation boner displayed prominently...

Wait a minute, I skipped a whole bunch. Let me back up several hundred parsecs.

I've lost count how many times I've run Alpha Blue. Each one is not only a learning experience and a madcap free-for-all, it's also a testament to overcoming any sort of anxiety, guilt, shame, or embarrassment. I'll admit, the first couple times I ran my 70's sci-fi porn RPG, I was a wee bit nervous. Indeed, there was a modicum of insecurity mixed in with the excitement. However, playing it proved those fears unfounded. It was a glorious release.

But then, after the first few times I wondered if the game was doomed to reside amongst the one-shot novelty set. Would anyone (including myself) want to play Alpha Blue more than once? Twice?

Unless something came up, Nix has played in every single Alpha Blue game. Steve nearly that. This was Justin's second game and the first for Harold and Jeff. I'd be lying if there weren't a couple people that flat-out told me Alpha Blue was not the game for them. Hey, I don't blame them and appreciate their honesty. But that's not a reason for the rest of us to stop. After all, I have no interest in playing Pathfinder, though I don't care if others do.

Anyway, getting back to this session report... 5 players.

Zaparon, human psion who has his own ship, wears a silver uniform with blue trim, and is bi-sexual, into abs and butts.

Epson is a cerulean blue robot, he's friendly and a masochist into cheerleaders and hair. He used to be a fax machine, but re-purposed to be a medic. He still receives faxes on occasion, reading them and throwing them away (unless it's something important).

Ha'chth is an alien who looks nearly human except for his dark amethyst skin tone. His uniform is tan suede and he's also a medic... and a zedi who plies The Way throughout the galaxy. He also had a thing for cheerleaders.

Cassidy Vivrath'zha is half-human and half Lovecraftian monstrosity. He's also both sexes. His human parts are female (and freckled). He owes a considerable amount of money to both a bounty hunter and a gangster.

Shumachs Plib is a human interior designer who left his colony because when everyone is starving, interior design isn't the first thing on people's minds. Shu has latent psionic powers but pretends at being a fierce bounty hunter... with the emphasis on fierce.

There was no pilot in their crew, so they'd have to rely on autopilot exclusively. I don't remember who, but someone asked if it was possible to have sex with the ship's autopilot program. I answered yes, even though at the time I had absolutely no idea how that would work.

I won't go too deep into the scenario's heart, except to say that the spacers were hired by a man whose daughter, Vanessa, (in her early 20's) was taken from Alpha Blue. To better connect, visualize, and identify with their mission, I provided a picture of Rose Byrne as a blonde cheerleader. Yowza!

The scenario became an investigation. Many leads were explored. Eventually, it led the PCs to Club Wet Star where they squared off against a vicious space warlord named Faygos (combining Dragos from Jason of Star Command with the less-than-popular beverage brand Faygo).

Along the way, exotic cocktails were ordered, such as the exploding star lemon-lime space gin surprise.

The PCs boarded and shot up nearly all the male crew. The two females were unharmed. The first was working out in the gym. Ha'chth was immediately attracted to her and started working his extra-terrestrial mojo. The juicy details: a year ago, she participated in a 500-humanoid gangbang, Ha'chth and her did it standing up, and his "O" face is best described as "hurts so good". He got to add a d4 worth of temporary Health to his total.

The other female was an alien cat-girl. Strangely, everyone left her alone and she retained her position as ship's weapons specialist.

They walked into Club Wet Star and immediately headed for the main stage where strippers were pole dancing. It wasn't long before Shu sensed Vanessa's presence. They made a B-line for the jacuzzi/bedroom area of the club and Ha'chth forced Wet Star's madame to show him where Vanessa was being kept.

The dark amethyst alien couldn't keep it in his pants and before rescuing her there was consensual anal sex. More temporary Health! How did Ha'chth get so much tail? It's good to be a zedi. ;)

Faygos' thugs attacked everyone who wasn't purple balls deep in Vanessa. After a few scrapes, the PCs dispatched the thugs. Ha'chth and his latest conquest joined the others and they all made for the door. Unfortunately, Faygos was waiting for them!

The space warlord was accompanied by 4 more thugs. This was a pitched battle. Both sides took substantial hits. At last, it was only the PCs vs. Faygos. He brought out a strange device that lowered the gravity considerably - allowing me to use my sparkly blue and pink circle of slick. Dice rolled off the circle frequently. The robot rolled a critical failure - I think it was Jeff that suggested a fax came in just as Epson was firing - he did minor damage to one of his comrades. Faygos did some serious damage, forcing one of the medics to stop attacking and heal while a couple of the PCs took random bodies as meat shields.

Faygos was eventually killed. The crew flew both Tiny Dancer and Sunfish back to Alpha Blue, selling their original, smaller ship to pay off one of Cassidy's loans. The rest of the money was spent on fitting a hot tub in the Sunfish and a huge celebratory blow-out. It was quite the party.

There, ensconced in corinthian leather stood Shumachs Plib. Once an interior designer and wannabe bounty hunter who didn't know exactly how to shoot his vortex equalizer... now, he was captain of an impressive military vessel - that had its own transparent aluminum hot tub. Everyone could see his validation boner, but no one cared. They had their own primitive urges to concern them. And the most pressing of queries... is there such a thing as a mermaid cheerleader?

The above only touches on the many adventures and random tables coming soon in Girls Gone Rogue.

There's still a week left to back the Kickstarter. The maps are FREE. Anyone can use them for non-commercial uses. Because I'm confident we'll reach the next stretch goal, I had Glynn Seal of +MonkeyBlood Design design the Chihuahua class starship, Tiny Dancer, for use in today's game. That dropbox link will be released when the KS reaches $3,500. So close!

Thanks for reading. Please share this experiment in sci-fi and sleaze with others!

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

That's a line by Sutter Cane from the movie In the Mouth of Madness. But I think it's also appropriate for today's blog post, given that "blue" has another connotation [showing or mentioning sexual activity in a way that offends many people]. Wow, doesn't get any more fucking apt than that, does it? Haha.

So, rather than focusing on horror, I'd like to say a few words on another subject that occasionally scares us: sex.

Just as in everyday life, there are certain taboos about sex in RPGs. I can understand why. It's generally considered a private thing. People want it in varying degrees, in certain forms and expressions. The majority of us keep it behind closed doors. From the outside, it may look like a shameful secret. But it's not, well, not for most of us.

Thinking about it now, I'm reminded of the 80's sci-fi film Alien Nation. There's a drug talked about and it happens to drive the plot. Pretty sure it's blue in color - not a lot of pictures available. I had to look up its name (apparently, the internet isn't sure how it's spelled, as I found 3 different versions on 3 different websites): ss'jabroka.

However, I clearly remember that it was a narcotic, extremely pleasurable and addictive, it made the "newcomers" stronger and able to work harder so that the more they worked, the more they received. They were essentially slaves to this drug. I don't know about anyone else, but I see a parallel. Yes, obviously, the street drugs we're all familiar with but, less obvious, sex!

Incidentally, I'm reading Chris Offutt's memoir about his dad - My Father, The Pornographer - before I dive into John Cleve's Spaceways series of sci-fi literary porn (written by Andrew J. Offutt under one of his many pseudonyms). To many, the man who wrote 400+ books, most of them considered porn, was obsessed with sex. He was. And I must be, too, cause that seems natural to me. That seems "normal". Not the normal I see everyday out in the world, external; but the kind of normal that seems "right" or "logical" or "good" in my mind; internal.

Putting out stuff like Alpha Blue and Girls Gone Rogue (11 days left for this Kickstarer campaign) seems right, logical, and good. And I've received plenty of praise, which I'm flattered and grateful for. It makes the criticism easier to take. To be honest, it would feel weird if I wasn't taking flak from people. Probably because I've always been a weirdo and outsider. Getting negative feedback from a certain segment of the population is normal for me. As are feelings of alienation - aha! Alien Nation... alienation. See what I did there?

This whole blog post is a bit stream-of-consciousness (my usual jam), so I'll keep on with it. The other day I was thinking about my crazy decision to throw my/our RPG dirty laundry into the light of day, writing these books which some gamers probably regard as straight-up "porn".

A couple weeks back, I was in Disney World. One particular night, I was in the hotel room, watching the kids and probably eating pizza, flipping through the TV channels until I landed on Back to the Future. I hadn't seen that movie in over a decade. So, I started watching.

Long story short, when Michael J. Fox is playing guitar for his parents' under-the-sea prom everything is going good. Then he breaks into some rock and roll that's just different and wild enough to impress the audience. Finally, he ends on a bizarre... solo or something weird that no one seems to understand and basically freaks everyone out.

I can relate to that. This may be delusional, but I happen to think that injecting sex into RPGs (not that I'm the first person to think of or do such) is the future. It's going to be part of mainstream geek culture going forward until, I hope, it merges with pop culture and we all start to see some serious movement on the tabletop RPG front. Where, if you asked 10 random Americans in their 20's if they regularly played the kind of RPGs we're talking about, at least 3 or 4 would probably say, "Yes."

Sex might not be the reason for the future proliferation of RPGs in pop culture, but it won't hurt. That deep, inner need (even if we're consciously rejecting it, shouting profanities at it, or just hoping particular urges stay locked in the closet) will find expression somehow. Life, uh, finds a way - wow, I'm kind of overdoing it with the film quotes!

The vehicle could be anything. Hopefully, I can continue to stand upon the shoulders of those Old Ones who came before and do my part. A new age of roleplaying may be just around the corner. Whatever I have to do to help usher it in, I'm going to do. No matter how much I stick out because the world I've chosen to inhabit is blue... or full of tentacles and strippers.

Thanks for reading my sort of rant, sort of getting something off my chest. I welcome discussion, if anyone wants to chat about it.

VS

p.s. Yes, indeed! Girls Gone Rogue. Check out the video, stretch goals (Tiny Dancer coming soon), and reward tiers for backers. Please share it on social media or wherever people are talking about RPGs!

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Even though I'm getting over a cold, things are good and I've got so much awesomeness planned for Girls Gone Rogue that it's insane! My latest creation - a random table for coming up with "banter" on the fly.

While in Florida, I sent myself 2 or 3 texts a day. Those text messages contained notes for random tables, scenario seeds, and all kinds of stuff.

Last year, I took my oldest daughter to see Captain EO, a short science-fantasy film starring Michael Jackson, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and executive produced by George Lucas. I got to see it when it came out way back in 1986 and then again in early 2015. From that list of names, one might think that this film could very well be the most impressive thing ever. It's not. Interesting, kind of cool, and nostalgia-inducing... but not really over-the-top epic.

We were all going to go again, but discovered that Captain EO was gone. In its place was a Pixar short film "festival". After some digging, I found out that Captain EO was removed from Disney World's Epcot theme park back in 1996, but was brought back for a limited engagement after Michael Jackson's death.

What's going to happen to Captain EO now? I'm not sure, but one of the many Disney employees shepherding us to and fro tried to reassure me that, "It's on YouTube."

Since we've hit our first and second stretch goals, to the right is a teaser of the new starship Glynn of +MonkeyBlood Design is creating.

Recently, I read a blog post featuring quickdraw / gunfighting rules. I liked the idea, but didn't care for the execution, personally... just a matter of aesthetics. Being a fan of spaghetti westerns, I'll be including some of that.

Plus, there have been so many excellent suggestions made over at the Crimson Dragon Slayer & Alpha Blue g+ community (please join!). I'm going to modify and include as much as I can.